SAP Commerce Cloud 2211

(De)composed – SAP Commerce Cloud 2211

An impressive release presentation. Far-reaching effects for on-premise customers. The term composable commerce. In this post “(De)composed – SAP Commerce Cloud 2211” I would like to share our experiences as a service provider for the SAP Commerce Cloud:

The 2211 release of the SAP Commerce Cloud

The 2211 release is a real milestone compared to previous releases. It was clearly communicated: From this version onwards only cloud. For on-premise customers, this means that the journey ends with the 2205 version – with the exception of support, patches and security updates, no new features will be added.

More detailed information about what is included in this release can be found on the SAP help pages:

Cloud customers are given the prospect that releases will appear on a monthly cycle. Moreover, the new features will not require migration, only need to be activated. Updates should then be able to be installed easily, similar to patches. We cannot judge that at the moment.

Technical updates

Technically, this means that SAP must quickly expand the OCC API (which is the web service interface to the commerce functionalities of the platform) to include all commerce functions. These must remain consistent in the future – existing endpoints must then not be changed or modified but versioned. This is certainly not impossible using an API that has already grown pragmatically (but definitely not an API-first approach), but it is still challenging.

Composable Storefront of the SAP Commerce Cloud

Another milestone is that the open source frontend project – Spartacus in the form of the new Composable Storefront is the responsibility of SAP. As a customer, you benefit from the fact that higher feature sales can now be expected in the front end. Further, the front end is also within the scope of support for the SAP Commerce Cloud.

The term “Composable” is probably more of a clever marketing exercise, immediately creating an association with the term Composable Commerce; more on that a little later.

Let’s stay with the front end and the question: What’s composable about it? We didn’t find a clear answer to this in the documentation. But the setup may shed some light on this. When setting up the frontend, the frontend can be composed from a number of features. E.g. the Assisted Service Module or B2B Account Management. This already existed in the previous Spartacus versions, but in a slightly more technical format.

SAP’s setup for a composable frontend

It is now up to SAP to provide additional functions in the front end that are included in the commerce core. Allowing customers to set up the e-commerce environment quickly and easily.

An example that has not yet been adapted in the frontend is the ticket system and thus the ability to create or view service tickets in the frontend.

The function for creating and commenting on service tickets has been at the core of SAP Commerce for many years and has also been implemented in the Accelerator storefronts. The Accelerator Storefront is a strongly coupled reference frontend implementation based on Spring MVC and Java Server Pages (jsp). Accelerators have been around for more than 10 years and the penetration and standard range of features is correspondingly strong. However, no new projects should be based on this technology, but on the Composable Frontend.

Meaning for SAP Customers and how to keep up with all details

SAP customers and partners can track when features are available in the Composable Frontend in the Roadmap Explorer.

In the event that the frontend provision of a feature via the composable storefront is too far in the future, you as a customer would have to implement this yourself. This may sound complex at first, but it is not necessarily so, because only a corresponding OCC interface needs to be implemented against existing commerce functionality and a corresponding frontend view. As soon as the function is available in the standard, at least the OCC interface should be harmonized again. It is justifiable and should be taken into account that this project effort lies with the customer.

SAP anticipates the term Composable Commerce

Let’s get back to the question of composable. Until the release information for 2211, I had only heard the term in the context of commerce, i.e. composable commerce. There will probably be a battle of interpretation behind the term composable commerce for a while.

In my argument, I follow the approach of breaking down the big: MACH (Microservice based, API-First, Cloud Native, Headless) down to the small: Commerce. The term Packaged Business Capability (PBC) is often used in this context: the grouping of microservices for a business purpose. A blog post worth reading: “What are Packaged Business Capabilities?” by Hannah (Egan) Jarrett.

In this respect, I would also agree in the commerce context that such PBCs could be located, for example, at the level of shopping cart and checkout, commerce search or, for example, promotions.

Why the SAP Commerce Cloud as such is not composable

I don’t see the SAP Commerce Cloud in this environment. It offers a more closed approach via modules. Compared to other commerce providers, there is an almost inexhaustible portfolio of B2B and B2C commerce functionalities as well as various vertical aspects: e.g. finance, telco, digital business. However, it is not so easy to share or to access individually.

SAP’s intention

But that’s probably not SAP’s intention. In the webcast CXUnplugged: Composable Commerce Confessions, Riad Hijal (Head of SAP Commerce) takes up the term. She anticipates it in the way that the SAP Commerce Cloud represents an e-commerce basis that covers a maximum of the classic but comparable requirements. Also customers create added value or market advantage through the implementation or integration of other composable solutions. Given that Gartner reports suspect a high barrier of complexity in the future, which will doom a considerable number of commerce projects to failure because they are planned too ambitiously, SAP offers a safe harbor with this approach that is a good basis for a variety of use cases forms.

For comparison: The Java programming language (first released in 1996) was never the best programming language. However, its success is based on the fact that it is easy to learn, is relatively robust and provides the most features for the development of enterprise applications.

Summary of SAP Commerce Cloud release 2211

In summary, I do not consider the SAP Commerce Cloud to be a representative of composable commerce. The term composable is only used in the storefront. The “new” frontend is somewhat configurable via features. The announcements of the 2211 release are promising.  All customers already in the SAP Commerce Cloud receive the confirmation that they are on the right path. On-premise customers have good reasons to continue to moving to the SAP Commerce Cloud.

written by David Scheffel